in an article in the American Prospect titled Report from the Field: The Rust Belt’s Blues Turn It Red:

"There were similar, worse surprises in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And voter suppression wasn’t the only reason. It takes a lot of villages to get out the vote. But a lot of the villagers stayed home this year, rather than pitching in to help elect or even vote for Clinton. As Harold Meyerson and Gabrielle Gurley have pointed out recently, Clinton was never able to come up with a pro-worker message that resonated with Midwestern working-class whites, or that generated the same enthusiasm in the black community that Obama had. Clinton’s inability to marshal sustained and committed engagement from her own base turned out to be her candidacy’s most fatal flaw."

This article is just one more piece of the puzzle explaining why HRC lost the key states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio electoral votes. It was not about the disgusting Donald Trump being a better candidate, Supreme Court vacancies, trade deals, inequality, or injustice. It was about telling and convincing rural America that she was really sincere in addressing their needs. She failed miserably. Rural and Small-Town America is not interested in someone who soft-peddles on trade issues which cost them their jobs, on fracking which destroys their farms and pollutes their air and water, or student loans which are destroying their educated children's futures. They want the basics: life, liberty, and a decent standard of living, not bullshit about togetherness.

The DNC bears significant guilt as well in this failure with its Third Way, Wall Street friendly, and neo-liberal policies. Catering to the professional elites and abandoning blue collar workers, many of them union workers who worked in the close factories in those states shows a grand stupidity and arrogance.

Yes, Hillary won the popular vote by a million plus votes over a demagogue and racist but lost the heart of America due to arrogance and elitism. The question is whether the DNC has learned anything?